Russia’s war threatens not only the present but also the Olympic future of Ukraine. A young gymnast gives hope

CHORNOMORSK, Ukraine — When Oleksandra Paskal first took to the mat as a 4-year-old, her rhythmic gymnastics coach saw only potential in a sport where the Olympics are the ultimate goal. Then a Russian missile destroyed her summer home in the southern Odessa region, burying her under rubble and severing her left leg.

Oleksandra’s coach, Inga Kovalchuk, prides herself on her ability to predict the future, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Russia’s war against Ukraine is destroying the nucleus of a sporting culture that was once a European stronghold.

Two years after her injury in May 2022, Oleksandra, along with 12 girls in the sunlit room, diligently followed the instructions of her demanding coach. No one paid any attention to her prosthetic leg, but although she still has more of the determination and dedication that first caught Kovalchuk’s eye, she will never be quite the same again.

“Oleksandra, you do the exercise with your whole foot, the others on half toes,” Kovalchuk told the group.

Now 8, the girl who once wanted to compete in the Olympics now dreams of the Paralympics. After just six months of rehabilitation, she was back in training. She exuded confidence and won her first competition a year after the attack with unwavering grace and agility. She inspires a following far beyond the rhythmic gymnastics community.

“Sometimes I’m even afraid: Will I be able to do this? Not them, but me?” Kovalchuk admitted. “And in general, it’s incredibly difficult for everyone at the moment.”

It takes a decade and a nationwide infrastructure of training facilities, youth schools, equipment and coaches to develop an Olympic champion. This process begins in early childhood and results in most aspirants being eliminated long before they can compete in the Games.

More than 500 sports facilities were damaged or occupied by Moscow’s troops, leaving young athletes with nowhere to train, the Sports Ministry said. Coaches joined the army or fled abroad, and some children who joined the army at the beginning of the war have not returned. Those who stayed face frequent air raid sirens that can last for hours on end. The destruction of sports schools means some children may never discover their potential.

Even if the war ended tomorrow, it could take a decade for Ukrainian athletics to recoup its losses, Veerle De Bosscher, a professor of sports policy at the Free University of Brussels who studies how countries produce champions, wrote in an email to the Associated Press.

Seventy of Kovalchuk’s 110 pre-war gymnasts, including some of her most promising young talent, fled the country and have not returned. Although she has some new students, including internally displaced people, her class now numbers only 60 students.

“My main task today is not to achieve high results in sports, but to preserve the mental and physical health of our children,” Kovalchuk said.

“The judges don’t care where you come from”

According to Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, more than two million children have fled the country. The exodus is already having an impact on various sports, as coaches are losing young talent in whom they had invested years of work.

At the Liko diving school in Kyiv, Ukraine’s largest, 50 percent of the most promising children have disappeared, said Illia Tseliutin, head coach of the Ukrainian national diving team. Two of the 20 coaches have joined the army and three have fled the country. Those numbers are almost certainly higher for frontline schools in the east and south, he said.

Tseliutin understands on a personal level. He fled the Luhansk region in 2014, shortly after Russian forces first attacked there, and his hometown of Rubizhne has been occupied since 2022. Many Ukrainian divers and swimmers originally come from the occupied east and south and have no home to return to, let alone a functioning swimming pool, so they remain abroad.

“We are at war, children are leaving and maybe competing for other countries,” Tseliutin said. That creates a vicious circle even for those who stay in Ukraine, who have fewer top athletes to compete with and whose time in the pool is interrupted by air raid sirens that go on for hours, he said.

Coaches used to plan their training schedules four years in advance. Now they are simply trying to make sure their sport survives the war.

“Our job is to prepare for competitions,” said Tseliutin. “The judges don’t care where you come from, they only evaluate your jumps.”

Mines in the water, rockets in the air

The southern city of Kherson, on the banks of the Dnipro River, was once fertile ground for Ukrainian rowing. The Ukrainian rowing team heading to Paris this year is made up of several teams from the region, including former Olympians.

But this section of the Dnipro now represents the only natural barrier between Ukrainian and Russian troops in the region. Drones, artillery and rockets fly over the river every day, and there are mines in the water.

All 200 children and 15 coaches who row in Kherson have fled the city, which is under almost constant attack, and only about 20% of the children are still rowing at all, either in Ukraine or abroad, says Ihor Harahulia, president of the nonprofit Kherson Rowing Association. The Kherson School of Higher Sportsmanship, where rowers and other competitive athletes trained, is a pile of rubble after numerous Russian attacks and flooding from the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam last June.

Given the dangers of the water and the lack of coaches and facilities, it is unlikely that a child in Kherson today will discover an untapped talent for rowing. Harahulia is still there, but even he has left the water. He delivers humanitarian aid by car.

“Nobody can row at the moment because it would almost certainly be fatal,” he said.

But there is no point in rebuilding the sports infrastructure now, said acting Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi, “because there will be another strike and we will lose the money we invested.”

That’s why people like Hennadii Zuiev, one of the coaches who fled Ukraine, find it hard to imagine returning. The 48-year-old high jump coach left Kherson in the first days of the large-scale Russian invasion and moved with his family from country to country across Europe.

Before the war, he had trained several young athletes. Now he is in the Portuguese city of Monte Gordo and focuses only on adults. Among those he trained are Ukrainian high jumpers Kateryna Tabashnyk and Andriy Protsensko. The latter qualified for the Olympic Games in Paris.

Zuiev would like to return to Ukraine, but his city is under constant bombardment and the school where he was once educated lies in ruins.

“I just can’t imagine how, where and what I’m going to do,” he says. “Every day I think about it and every day I can’t find an answer for myself.”

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John Leicester contributed from Paris.

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AP coverage of the Olympic Games: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games